Bigshot directors Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson have reached out to TV makers in a bid to stop them using a feature they both hate. It’s often referred to as motion smoothing and it’s despised by many for making things look cheap.
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If you’re unfamiliar with the feature, it aims to smooth images by artificially increasing the frame rate by adding a fake frame between the actual frames. While it’s great for sports, it can produce what’s called the “soap opera effect”, which can make good things look like total ass, much like the crappy soap operas of yore.
As this has become something many TV companies have turned on by default, directors are becoming pissed off with it. And look, fair enough. If your hard work was being undone by horrible factory settings on a TV, you’d probably be angry as well.
As reported by /Film, members of the Directors Guild Of America copped an email recently stating that Nolan and Anderson have reached out to TV makers in an attempt to have both parties work together on the issue.
Essentially, they just want TV manufacturers to know how much directors hate motion smoothing and the effect it has on their work. Nolan, Anderson and the director of Terminator 3, Jonathan Mostow, sent out a survey for Directors Guild members to fill out, highlighting their favoured TV settings. It also offers suggestions on how TV companies can remedy the issue, like implementing an auto-detect feature which can tell you whether or not motion smoothing is appropriate for what’s being watched, or putting a single button on the remote to turn it off.
Whether or not TV makers will listen is another question, but I’d say there’s probably a good marketing opportunity in “director approved” TVs.
